Why does he call me grandma if he is not my grandson?, why does he talk to me screaming as if I were deaf?, why does he answer for me when someone questions me?, why does he talk to me with diminutives as if I were a child? , why do they want me to do other people’s tasks because ‘I have all the time in the world’?, why does he say that I re-paper because I don’t do what he wants?…”
These are some of the complaints expressed by the elderly in the many workshops on ageism (discrimination on the basis of age, especially of the elderly) that the La Caixa Foundation has launched and which they have collected in the Glossary publication on ageism, which aims to raise awareness about the good treatment of older people and to promote it.
Something that is also claimed by the writer Soledad Puértolas, who in the prologue of this publication cries out against the homogenization of a group that every year will be wider and with very different realities. “The terms and expressions that are normally used to address this large and diverse group are often inappropriate and even offensive. Old man, old man, our old people, our grandparents, are like children, retired, vulnerable… Words and expressions like these are usually pronounced from a position of superiority and with obvious simplism. In the treatment that older people receive, an attitude marked by infantilization, depersonalization and dehumanization predominates.
In addition to the words he mentions, there are other expressions that older people reject, according to the text. So, they are bothered by the way they are spoken to. “Thinking that the older person is generally not feeling well, has trouble understanding complex sentences, gets tired quickly in conversations… causes the younger person to address the older person more slowly, with shorter sentences, with a high tone of voice and using diminutives”. The elderly reject this way of speaking to them because “it seems that we all have a disability, are stupid or that we are children”, says Teresa Perales, a participant in a workshop of these characteristics.
The use of diminutives is one of the elements that bothers them the most and it does not only happen with words linked to old age, such as vellet or iaiet, but also with the use of their proper names. “Who said I like to be called Paquito?” asks Paco, a retired businessman, who refused to name his son Paco precisely because he “hates” diminutives.
They also reject expressions like “our old people”, because “it distills paternalism, because, if they are ours, I have to know what is best for these people, so I will end up deciding on them in different matters , as was well seen in the pandemic”, notes the cited book. They say the same about phrases like “we’ll take the medication”, “we’ll take a shower”, since only the elderly will take the medication or shower.
They don’t want to be categorized in the stereotype that in old age it’s all health problems, that everyone changes their personality (they’re grumpy or stubborn) or that they all have social problems (they’re unproductive, distrustful, inflexible or lonely).
“The aging of society must not lead to a degradation of the treatment that human beings give to each other. As a society, we are obliged to defend, at all times, the dignity of the human individual”, Soledad Puértolas points out.
